The present invention relates to the use of physiologically acceptable enzyme mixtures with lipolytic, proteolytic and amylolytic activity, but especially of mixtures of digestive enzymes such as pancreatin, for the treatment of diabetes and for the manufacture of medicinal products suitable for this treatment. The invention relates especially to the use of these enzyme mixtures with lipolytic, proteolytic and amylolytic activity, but especially of pancreatin or mixtures of digestive enzymes containing pancreatin, for the adjuvant therapy of both type I and type II primary diabetes.
As used herein the term “diabetes” is understood to mean diabetes mellitus, the so-called “sugar sickness”. In addition to other, e. g. secondary forms of diabetes that can occur as sequelae of other primary diseases, two main groups of disorders of carbohydrate metabolism are distinguished, i. e. type I diabetes due to insulin deficiency and type II diabetes due to reduced insulin effectiveness, the course of the disease depending on the type concerned, among other factors. Diabetes is furthermore a chronic disease with a variety of pathological manifestations and is accompanied, for example, by disorders of lipid metabolism, circulation and glucose metabolism. The typical symptoms of this disease include elevated blood sugar (hyperglycemia), excretion of sugar in the urine (glycosuria), tendency to infections and pruritus. Diabetes tends to be a progressive disorder and in many cases is also accompanied by various complications. Known complications include, for example, neurologic and vascular diseases. It is therefore necessary to adjust the therapy to meet each patient's individual requirements in every phase of the illness and to select the suitable medicinal product for each individual case. It may also be desirable for this therapy to supplement the selected primary medications with other medicinal products in the form of an adjuvant treatment which can exert a supporting effect on the therapy and beneficially influence the further course of the illness.